Recapping last night’s games, Henrique and Brodie, Vezina Trophy, and more.

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Ducks/Predators

What was mostly a slow game really picked up in the third, but the Predators were able to hang on for a 2-1 Game 7 win, moving on to the second round for a date with the Sharks. This marks the first time in four years the Preds have made it to the second round. 

It was the perfect road first period for the Predators, as Colin Wilson corralled a fifty-fifty puck in the slot to make it 1-0 about six minutes in. With under five minutes left in the period, Paul Gaustad deflected a puck down and past Frederik Andersen to make it 2-0 Predators after one. The Ducks hadn’t played a bad period, per se, but a game like this is often decided by the slimmest of margins.

A fairly lifeless second period was not at all indicative of the third. After a Kesler power play goal brought the game within one, it was an onslaught from the Ducks. Rinne stood tall, though, saving 36 of the 37 shots he faced. Thought I don't give him much credit, he truly was the difference in this Game 7 for Anaheim. He was at his best when the team needed him to be. 

That game, or whatever else happens in these playoffs, doesn't change my outlook for Rinne next year in fantasy. I think his days of being a reliable top-12 goalie are gone, and will definitely be passing on him at the draft table. If he goes on a good run here, it'll only drive up his draft price. No thanks. 

Lightning/Islanders

The Islanders seemed to surprise a lot of people – myself included – with a 5-3 Game 1 win over the Lightning. It was sloppy at times, but Tampa Bay certainly did not look like the better team in this game until they were down three goals and the Islanders went into a shell.

It was a pretty wild first period, with Ondrej Palat scoring just a few minutes in. Then the Islanders reeled off three straight to take a 3-1 lead into the second period. Two of those goals off the stick of Shane Prince, a player the Senators should have never given up on.

The only tally of a fairly sloppy second period was from John Tavares, a snipe over the shoulder of Ben Bishop. The short-side goal would spell the end of Bishop’s night, as he was pulled on the day he was named a Vezina finalist.

Score effects took over in the third, a period largely dominated by the Bolts. Nikita Kucherov would make it 4-2 before Valtteri Filppula made it a one-goal game with about two and a half minutes left. That would be as close as they would come, though.

Kucherov now has six goals in six playoff games this year. I posted this one Twitter last night, and it’s worth noting (from Hockey Analysis): These are the goals per 60 minute (five-on-five) rates for Stamkos and Kucherov over the last two years.

This is something to keep in mind next year at draft tables. Kucherov is a slam-dunk third round pick, and drafting him at the end of the second round probably won’t be reaching.

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The finalists for the Vezina Trophy were announced, and they were Braden Holtby, Jonathan Quick, and Ben Bishop. If I am not mistaken, that is the second finalist nod for both Bishop and Quick, and the first for Holtby.

Fantasy owners know just how good all three of these players were. Quick posted a 40-win season, and his third straight season with a GAA under 2.30 (yes, I know they’re more team stats, but for fantasy, they’re crucial); Holtby had his second consecutive 40+ win season, tied Martin Brodeur for the single season win record, and posted his second .920+, 2.30-or-less season in a row; Bishop had the best save percentage of the three at .926, along with a sterling 2.06 GAA.

It seems like a done deal that Holtby wins the trophy, and that’s fine. Despite the wins largely being a reflection of just how good his team was, a guy that tied a goaltending record is unlikely to get overlooked.

Poor Henrik Lundqvist, though. The guy had the highest five-on-five save percentage in the league this year (among goalies with at least 2000 minutes played), and it was a top-10 season since the 2005-2006 lockout. He was second in adjusted save percentage behind Steve Mason. Considering he had solid standard stats like a .920 overall save percentage along with 35 wins, I thought he would get a nod here. It’s curious that this is a trophy voted on by the general managers. This sort of shows that many of them still rely on outdated statistics for goaltender evaluation. Think about this: Lundqvist and John Gibson had the same overall save percentage, but Gibson’s GAA was 0.41 goals fewer than Lundqvist’s. It’s almost as if Lundqvist had to bail out a bad defensive team all season.

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We are still a long way out from next season, but it’s still not too early to start thinking about where players slot. One player I suspect will be giving roto players fits on where to rank him is Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

This isn’t meant to eschew him as a talented player. He had back-to-back 20-goal seasons (as a defenceman!) to go along with back-to-back seasons of at least three shots on goal per game. He set a career-high with 55 points, 26 of those coming on the power play. It was an excellent season.

One thing that worries me is the 96 penalty minutes. His previous two seasons combined saw him take just 90 penalty minutes. For fantasy purposes, the more the better, but will he repeat something close to 90, be back somewhere in the 40-50 range, or somewhere between? That’s up for debate.

Also, just how much better can he improve on the minus-6? It’s a pretty useless stat, but still widely used in fantasy leagues. Is a full season of Mike Smith going to help? Are the Coyotes going to get a lot better defensively in one summer, a year after finishing 20^th in high-danger scoring chances against per minute?

The degree in regression for penalty minutes, the goaltending situation, and improvement of the Coyotes defensively as a whole will factor in big to OEL’s preseason ranking. He’s a top-end producer, it’s just some of the peripherals that are cause for concern.

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There was an article at Awful Announcing yesterday that ranked the 30 local NHL broadcast teams as voted by the fans. There are some really bad ones – I’m sorry Ducks fans, I can’t stand the broadcasts, and they would have finished much lower than 19^th for me – but there are some really good ones as well. Personally, I’m a big fan of both the Dallas and Carolina broadcasts. The former because Daryl Reaugh’s commentary is incredible, the latter because they are very informative beyond the “nice guy, tries hard” nonsense that permeates many other television teams. Check to see where your team ranked, and let us know in the comments some of your favourites (or non-favourites).

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Here are a couple players I will probably avoid in drafts next year. Regression is coming, and that will likely make their draft day price unpalatable.

Adam Henrique

I am ready to take the L on this one, though technically Henrique didn’t have over 50 points. He finished with 50 points exactly:

@ChrisWasselDFS I just can't project anyone on that team over 50 points. I like Henrique but unless he plays every minute w/ Cammy…

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) September 28, 2015

There are a few reasons why Henrique finished with 50 points this year:

1. A career-high 20.1% shooting. He has always been a fairly high-percentage shooter, but that was to an extreme. Furthermore, he was the first player in a decade to finish with at least 30 tallies on fewer than 150 shots on goal.
2. He finished second out of 125 forwards (minimum 1000 minutes played) in five-on-five on-ice shooting percentage last year, with the Devils scoring on 11.1% of shots taken with him on the ice. His three-year high before that was 8.1%. These things happen in single-season samples.
3. A career-high in ice time per game, coupled with his first season of at least 80 games played. In total, he had nearly 200 more minutes of total ice time than in any previous season. About half of those minutes were at five-on-five, or five-on-four.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect storm of point production.

This isn’t some scrub racking points, though. Henrique had averaged over 20 goals a season over the previous two 82-game seasons, and had 51 points in his rookie year. There is legit scoring talent here.

The problem is that there really isn’t much talent in New Jersey: Michael Cammalleri will be back, in all likelihood, but he’s not getting any younger as he’ll be in his Age 34 season, and goal scorers usually don’t age well; Kyle Palmieri is a very good NHLer, but they barely played with each other last year, so there’s no certainty they will next year; Pavel Zacha looks to have a bright future, but he’s an ‘if’ for now. Their defence corps doesn’t have much for top-end puck-moving talent, either.

Sheer attrition – or time on ice – means that Henrique likely gets over 40 points next year, and could still be a depth contributor in fantasy leagues. I will let him take up space on someone else’s roster, though.

T.J. Brodie

In contrast to Henrique, I was pretty confident Brodie would be a defenceman that could get to 40 points again. I was not very confident when after injuries and a slow start, Brodie had five points on December 1^st.

Despite the slow start, Brodie finished with 45 points, a career-high for him. The chances he repeats that, though, look unlikely.

Individual assist percentage (IAP) is the rate at which a player assists on a goal that occurs when he is on the ice. It is a way to look at players that may have been more (or less) involved in goals than they should have been. Think about this: no defenceman inside the top-10 IAP in 2014-2015 finished in the top-10 this past season, and only three of those top-10 from two seasons ago finished inside the top-30 this past year. Not even studs like Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson could repeat top-25 finishes in back-to-back seasons.

Last year, Brodie finished with 26 five-on-five assists, second in the league among defencemen. His IAP was 41.9-percent, after not having any season prior over 30-percent. This indicates a serious regression in assists next year at five-on-five, maybe by about 10 or so. That also assumes the Flames score as much next year with Brodie on the ice as they did this year, by the way.

Brodie doesn’t shoot much, so even getting back to double-digit goals like he did in 2014-2015 will be tough. His only saving grace to keep is overall point totals afloat would be a jump in power play points, but with Mark Giordano, Dougie Hamilton, and Dennis Wideman all still on the roster, I’m not sure that’s likely. There are only so many points and minutes to go around.

Brodie is an excellent real-life defenceman, but getting to 40 points for a third year in a row will be a tall task.

*Some stats from Hockey Reference, Hockey Analysis, and War On Ice.